McMorris Rodgers blocks vote but blasts president for going it alone

House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington. McMorris Rodgers blasts President Obama’s decision “to act alone” on immigration, while she and fellow Republican leaders have refused to allow the House to vote on a bipartisan Senate immigration reform plan.

The most blistering denunciation of President Obama’s immigration order, in this Washington, has come from a Republican leader who helped block the U.S. House of Representatives from voting on a comprehensive plan that passed the Senate with bipartisan backing.

“His decision to act alone blatantly disregards the will of the American people: For their elected leaders to work together to enact effective, long-term solutions that make people’s lives better. Tonight, the president has done exactly the opposite,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in a statement.

Instead, she charged, the president is pursuing “his own desire for unilateral action” which “trumps the democratic process.”

The congresswoman’s partisan boilerplate conceals what has really been cooking in the House.

McMorris Rodgers is chair of the House Republican Conference, fourth-ranking in the leadership headed by House Speaker John Boehner.

The leadership has refused to bring to the House floor the immigration plan passed last year with 68 votes in the Senate. It would double enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border but provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

“We have the votes in the House to pass comprehensive immigration reform … and yet the Republicans continue to sit on it and won’t give us a vote,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., senior member of Washington’s congressional delegation.

Immigration reform, along the lines of the Senate bill, would enjoy “bipartisan support,” Smith told a rally at the Federal Building.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., added in a statement: “House Republicans have shown themselves to be unwilling to make progress on this important issue. Time and again, they have refused to bring meaningful legislation to a vote on the House floor.”

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash. “Time and again they have refused to bring meaningful legislation to a vote on the House floor.”

McMorris Rodgers represents an Eastern Washington district tailored to be safely Republican. She won re-election earlier this month with 60 percent of the vote.

While ambitious to rise in Washington, D.C., she has not won admiration among colleagues from this Washington.

Alone in Washington’s delegation, McMorris Rodgers has refused to commit to a long-term extension of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, vital to sales abroad of U.S. (and Washington) products ranging from Boeing jets to wine to furniture.

Despite talk about “long-term solutions,” she has agreed to support only a six-month extension of the Ex-Im Bank.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, center, poses with students as he signs the DREAM Act. The bipartisan measure expanded state financial aid to undocumented students brought to Washington when very young. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Despite divided control, the Washington Legislature worked together this year to pass the DREAM Act, which makes state scholarship aid available to undocumented students brought to the Evergreen State when they were very young.

Gov. Jay Inslee, while praising Obama’s action, directed his words at the “other” Washington where he sat in Congress for 15 years.

“The president’s action should not absolve Congress of its responsibility to act in the face of a broken immigration system,” Inslee said in a statement.